


Rule Of Three (Plus One)

by Lady_R



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls II
Genre: Blood, Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Murder, Public Humiliation, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-16 05:20:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19639636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_R/pseuds/Lady_R
Summary: When Creighton was five, he loved counting the stars to fall asleep.Creighton couldn't count, of course – nor read or write, by the way – but all he needed was to look at them one by one to be less afraid when his parents would kick him out for this or that reason.At fifteen, he wanted to die.At twenty-five, he wanted to kill.And at thirty-five, against all expectations, he performs a good deed.





	Rule Of Three (Plus One)

At five years of age, Creighton is a mass of bones as white as frost, a bush of filthy hair without a neat cut, and two huge violet eyes spilling tears on the bruised hands. 

Lucatiel doesn’t know what his name is yet when she finds him, and when she asks him he answers her another thing. Yet she still takes those poor hands into hers, studying his hematoma like the words of a great novel. 

-Mother is angry at me.- the child whispers. -I dropped the bottle. These, she did with the belt.- 

Lucatiel’s mother is kind, albeit a bit absent: -Did you apologize?- 

-Many times. This evening she and father do not want to see at me. I sleep here, under the shed, so I don’t disturb them while they drink.- 

An old cloak lays underneath the rotten wood, alongside an empty sack, sad parody of a pillow. From the way he’s looking at her, the child seems to have noticed her astonishment.

-’Tis not that bad. You see the stars. When I can’t sleep, I count’em. Although I don’t know them numbers, no one teaches’em to me. Can’t even read.- 

-It’s cold.- Lucatiel comments, and wraps herself in her soft jacket. -You’ll get sick.- 

The child hugs himself, but pulls it back as soon as the swollen hands reach his waist. 

-My fault. Imma _cretin_ , I deserve it.- 

_It’s not a good word_ , Lucatiel thinks, _let alone used on oneself_. The boy sits down upon the pitiful resting place, wiping his snot with a strand of his dress. 

-Don’t do this. Here.-, the girl says handing him her kerchief, but the other doesn’t seem to hear her, and the too wide sleeve falls down the lifted arm.

Lucatiel almost jumps back. He’s so thin, the elbow bone sticks out. 

-Did you eat, at least?-

-Tonight I go to bed without supper. It happens when I act a cretin.- 

That word again. Lucatiel shakes her head, remembering Mother and Father’s grumbles when she and Aslatiel discovered swearwords. Her eye falls back on the child’s black palms, and for a moment she wants to cry. 

She takes a deep breath and leans her hand on the other’s shoulder. 

-Eh-oh?-

-Will you remind me your name?-

-Creighton.- the other mumbles. -But no one calls me this. They prefer Cret…-

-Now listen well, Creighton.-

Lucatiel sits down, opens her bag and rummages underneath the Bradden steel pocket knife and the sack of acorns she spent the afternoon picking. 

-I have a loaf of warm bread, with goat cheese. It’s my dinner, but we can share.- 

Silence, and Creighton’s eyes get as wide as the mood.

-F-Fore me?-

Lucatiel catches the new tear before it dampens and ruins the bread on her knees. Creighton wipes his face in his sleeves and gulps the first mouthful. You should thank me, Lucatiel thinks, it’s rude not to say thank you: but the words lay in her mouth and there they stay buried. Creighton’s cheeks light up pink. 

-Yer good.-, he says, sputtering breadcrumbs on her face. -What’s your name? If you can count we could look at the stars together.- 

At fifteen, Creighton’s hands are livid again. This time it’s the knuckles, and Lucatiel takes them into hers in between a punch and another to the innocent wall.

-Knock it off. ’Tis me. This’ll hurt you.-

-It hurts already.- 

Yet he stopped pounding the bricks, and Lucatiel considers it victory.

-What happened to your face?- 

Creighton staggers back, raising his hands on his face, but the red juice dripping from his round cheeks is unmistakable. 

-They stopped me in the street.- he gives up. -The same seven. I tried screaming, but they shut me up.- 

-And they poured wine on your head?-, is all Lucatiel manages to say. Creighton nods, pressing the side of his fist on the bricks. An old hut, abandoned for decades, where not even wolves show up. Perfect place for a boy abandoned by the world. 

-It’s the gran finale, see? What they didn’t give me, mother and father did. My blouse was new…-

He clenches his teeth, choking a sob, and brings his hand to his thighs hunching like a Necromancer. 

-Your parents shouldn’t hit you.- Lucatiel pants. -I can call the guards. They’d arrest them…-

-No!-

The sudden scream makes her jump. She brings her hand to her belt, where the Bradden steel dagger has been replaced by a Mail Breaker as shiny as a pearl. Creighton bares his teeth like a fiend.

-Don’t. I don’t wanna go to an institute. They’re my parents and I cannot hurt’em.- 

-You could stay with us.- Lucatiel tries. Creighton shakes his head, a sad grin on the filthy face. 

-Yer as poor as me, who d’ya think yer foolin’? Forget it. Those like me, must stay at their place.- 

-If it befits you.- 

Lucatiel’s tone is cold, but her eyes frantically run on Creighton’s face, on the pulsating of his chest, the shaking of his fingers, the clicking of the teeth. She opens her arms, and embraces her friend the moment he jumps in. 

-Creighton…-

-I swear I’ll kill myself.-

Lucatiel gasps, tightening the hold on her chest. -Why?-, she coughs out. 

-Who’s gon’miss me anyway?- 

_It’s desperation speaking, not him_ : Lucatiel repeats those words to herself for what feels like thousands of times, Creighton’s face pressed on her shoulder, her muscular arms tight around his shaking back. 

-Me. I’ll miss you. I care.-. Creighton emits a creaky wail, roaring into Lucatiel’s belt. -I’m here. Breathe. It’s all over.- 

He sniffs, looking at her with pity. 

-Yer joking?- 

-I never joke. Shhh, now.- Lucatiel repeats – and until dusk Creighton doesn’t speak, wrapped to his friend’s chest as if someone could steal her away any moment. 

At twenty-five, Creighton’s knuckles are blue. As his whole hand is, tight in the noose that keeps it tied to the column. The cheeks freeze underneath the mask, his teeth are so clenched it hurts, his thighs hurt for the long kneeling, but he won’t cry. Not for them. 

-Murderers! May Nito choke you!-

Two poor woodchoppers knocked down by a madman with an axe: the perfect tear-jerking story for the peasants that are yelling at him. -Murderers! Bloody murderers!-. They don’t know the truth and they live happily without it. Bad for them. He’s find another axe and run away forever. 

-Lick my garter, you pricks!-, Creighton barks hoarsely, and immediately reclines his forehead on the pole, shaking shoulders and dangling tongue. 

His father had screamed once: the axe had struck well, and the drop of blood erupting from his throat was copious enough to immediately damp his shirt. His mother had been harder. She had raised her hand to protect herself, and it had taken another blow to chop it off entirely. In front of her, crouched on the floor tiny and ragged, Creighton had felt like a giant. 

-If you din’t want me,- a spit between the eyes, damper than when she was drunk, -you could’ave given me away.- 

-Yer father was right, we should’ve smashed yer stupid head into bits when you were born.- 

Creighton’s hand had trembled lifting the axe again. He didn’t dare look into her eyes, but he had seen the lips well. 

-Get killed, little cretin.- 

Her last word before the axe had fallen into her brains, and with it the end of _Sir_ Creighton of Mirrah. He doesn’t remember well what had happened afterwards. He knows that when he had woken up, his face was already trapped inside that accursed mask. He remembers a door of bars, a stone wall, and a cot of rags and hay as soft as rose petals. 

And an empty cup. _Water, may Nahr Alma grab you all. Water. Water_. 

There’s seven more, tied in the square with him, but he doesn’t know what their names are or who they killed. A couple has already fainted, and they dangle like rotten fruits from the cuffed wrists; the one on his right is sobbing faintly against the pole.

-May Velka’s crows peck yer eyes out, filthy assassins!-

_Water. Water, damn it all_. The masks are the sign of the ones sentenced to death, but since Mirrah has been Mirrah, the established penance had never been dying of thirst. Trembling, panting, licking the air as if it could nourish him, Creighton shuts his eyes and waits. 

He doesn’t know when, exactly, that hand comes to stroke his hair. His eyelids feel as heavy as boulders when he opens them. There’s an oval face, a blonde ponytail, and a cup of…

Creighton lifts his head up. _It’s her, and she’s real_. Velka isn’t playing with his mind to punish him of his sins. Lucatiel holds the cup in both hands, lifting it to the face.

-Quick.-

-Th…-. But nothing comes out, there’s no air left in Creighton’s throat. The assassin pushes his face into the cup, filling the mask with water, and sips all that he can take in one sip. Another, and one more. _I won’t cry, Kremmel kick me_ : yet his lips quiver, and he has to bite them bloody not to fall any further. 

Lucatiel pulls back the empty cup. -I’m sorry, old friend.- 

_’Tis nothing_ , Creighton thinks. _They did me worse_. 

A sudden shot of headache – the relief of quenching thirst, the most beautiful thing in the world besides the knowledge that his parents are in their graves – forces him to shut his eyes again. Lucatiel is gone when he opens them. 

-Damn you all, assassins!- a woman screams from the first row. Creighton writhes around the pole and raises his middle finger. 

At thirty-five, the sun setting on Mirrah’s rocks reflects in Creighton’s eyes like in a mirror. His knuckles are covered by the mail gloves, but his nails are short and round, freshly filed by Milibeth’s refined hands.

Lucatiel sips her beer in silence – McLoyf bless Gilligan and his barrels – as if every sip tasted of bile. She licks her lips, staring at him from underneath the hilt of her hat. 

-I’m glad I saw you again. I often asked myself if you were still alive. If you were well.-

She’s nice, and if Creighton didn't know her he’d be surprised at knowing she’s still alive around there. 

-No one steps on me no more. They try, and they always regret it.- 

In the end, he didn’t come out _that_ bad. He can fight, he can survive on his own everywhere, and no one lumps him in Majula. He won’t stay for long, though. He calls himself Wanderer for a reason, and there’s not much to do to pass time in a village that tiny; nor does he want to learn his letters, even if the old mage has offered to teach him. Staying still to watch others live more interesting lives is not a thing for him. 

A cretin he was born, a cretin he can die: if his compatriot with the house full of books has to disagree, his axe will have the final words. 

Lucatiel moves all of a sudden, blinking. Who knows what she’s even thinking of. 

-Do you still count the stars?- she asks.

-Can’t even read, d’ya think I can count?- 

_Maybe I’m dyslexic – is this how it’s said?_ It took Pate to propose the idea, obviously, as if his pigs of parents could ever think of it. A dyslexic son can be taught, even if differently: a cretin son is rotten to the root, he can only stay home forever to get beaten and break his head on the wood until he finds out an axe can cut something else as well.

Lucatiel takes a deep breath, sounding underneath her mask like wind in a cave, and places her jug on the rock next to her thigh. 

-I forgot. You still look at the stars?-

-Whenever I see’em. I’m still the same deep down. I only have some blood on my hands. Who doesn’t? Can handle myself even if I’m not a…-

He interrupts himself, stretching his neck towards his friend. That was a sob, he saw it well.

-What is it?- 

Lucatiel gasps, a tent of blonde hair slipping in front of her face. -Nothing. ’Twas nothing.- 

-Oi, I’m not that stupid. What is it?- 

The warrior takes a deep breath and places her hand on his shoulder. Creighton raises his hand to swat it away, but his hand is stuck halfway. Lucatiel doesn’t even look at it. 

-Aslatiel is dead. That accursed Lord Aldia put his hands on him.-

The brother, yes: it takes Creighton a full second to remember who that was. A tear slips out of Lucatiel’s mask, barely lifted for the sip from before. 

-I’m… sorry.- But it sounds fake. He can barely remember Aslatiel’s face, and none of his secrets has died with him. Yet Lucatiel’s crying is earnest. _What do I say now?_

-If I go to this Aldia fellow and kill him, does anything change?- 

-No.- Lucatiel raises her voice. -He’s dead now. I’ve got to get used to it. It’s not as if killing him will bring back Aslatiel.-

She slips her hands underneath the mask and sobs into them. It’s all so horribly familiar – the posture, the gaze, the trembling hands.

So familiar Creighton knows, with a certainly that feels like a miracle, what to do.

-Come here.-

This time it’s her who jumps into his arms, and pours tears into his cape. The assassin strokes her back with short, clumsy gestures, the jug abandoned on the dry grass. -I’m here. Y’can cry, I’ll shut up.- 

-Thanks.- Lucatiel’s voice cracks, her fingers cling to all the fabric they can cling to. Creighton slowly rocks, cradling her, and smiles underneath the mask of the sentenced.


End file.
